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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 176287" data-attributes="member: 537">I think the situation right now with sorcs and wizards is a compromise between what the designers originally intended for the main arcane spellcasting class, and continuity concerns.If you look at the CRPG Pool of Radiance 2, there are only sorcs in that game, and no wizards. POR2 was designed during the early stages of 3E, when a lot of things were still up in the air. This suggests to me that the sorc's spontaneous-casting mechanic was what was originally going to be used for the wizard, without any separate sorcerer class. For one reason or other this was changed, and now we have separate wizard and sorc classes.1 theory is that only having spontaneous casting didn't go down too well in various circles, since it's quite a major break from the traditional prepare/cast mechanic that D&D magic has always used. Hence the wizard was redesigned, and a separate sorcerer class was created to use spontaneous casting. Which is a good thing; there have always been lots of people who didn't like Vancian-style prepare/cast magic. The sorc probably fits these people's intuitions of how magic should work, better than does the wizard.The situation now is a bit messy, with two classes that essentially share the same niche. This is reflected in how people keep coming up with tweaks that make the sorc more like the wizard, and vice-versa.Nevertheless, the spontaneous casting mechanic is just that: a mechanic. It doesn't require a backstory about magic in the blood, or descent from dragons or anything like that. You could have a world where mages gain spells through study and hard work, and they could still cast spells like sorcs. In 4E, I reckon you'll probably see spell prep disappear entirely, once people have become sufficiently comfortable with spontaneous casting. Remember, you heard it here first. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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